The present disclosure relates to switching regulator circuits and methods.
Regulator circuits are used to provide voltage and current in a wide variety of applications. One type of regulator circuit is a switching regulator. Switching regulators typically include switching circuits that selectively couple voltage and current to an inductor. Energy is stored in the inductor and then translated to different voltage and current levels according to system needs. For example, one example switching regulator (e.g., a “Buck” regulator or “down converter”) may receive 10 volts and 1 ampere (“amp”) of current from a power supply and generate 1 volt at approximately 10 amps.
Systems on a Chip (SoCs), processors (e.g., CPUs and GPUs), memories, and other complex digital information processing systems are sometimes composed of several voltage domains, such as V_Core(s), V_DDR, V_Serdes, V_Memory, etc. Providing power to these different voltage domains can be challenging because of the strict requirements of these systems, such as limitations on voltage variation and current load and load step requirements, for example. Powering up these voltage domains with independent voltage regulators featuring a high slew capability present several advantages. First, it allows optimization of the voltage of each power domain according to the power need of a particular power domain at any given point of time. Having voltage regulators with fast slew capabilities presents the advantage of tracking the workload of each power domain in real time or quasi real time, therefore keeping supply voltage always near a minimum and significantly reducing power consumption. It also allows the power domains to be fully powered down independently without relying on inefficient headers or power switches in the SoCs, CPUs or GPUs, for example.
In some applications it may also be advantageous to integrate one or more voltage regulators inside a digital integrated circuit (IC) package to reduce the system integration complexity at board level, reduce the number of inputs and outputs (IOs), and/or reduce the input current of a digital IC. However, integration of a voltage regulator inside a package is challenging because of the limited space inside the package. Building an efficient and effective regulator that can fit inside a package and meet the stringent requirements that are often associated with complex digital ICs remains a challenge. The industry needs fast, highly efficient, and very small footprint voltage regulators that can be integrated in the package of modern SoCs, CPUs, GPUs, and other digital ICs.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to overcome the limitations of existing switching regulator technology.